Butte semi-weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1886-1890, 1887-02-23
MEXICAN HOUSEKEEPING,
Some OF the Disagreeable Habits Of the
Servants.

Some of the DiSa Habits OF the
Servants.
Mexican men servants are generally much
cleaner and better dressed than women.
As a rule one must possess strong nerves
and a good appetite to be able to do JUS
tice to ones food after having seen the
cook. One look at her flowing locks and
greasy reboso-it is enough! "Flowine
hair sounds very picturesque as applied
to these descendants of the M~ontezumas,
but when it is very dirty snd the head to
which it is attached requires a suspicious
amount of scratching, it is not a pretty
I picture in. connection with the soup. The
most disagreeable habit of Mexican do
mesti.s is that they persist in wearing
times braided, but generally matted, un-
combed and ALWAYS in the way. As well
might you suggest to a Chinaman to cur
tail his queue as try to induce one of these
women to coil up her hair. Her mother
and grandmother and great-great-grand-
mother wore theirs in the same way and
she will not depart from the time-honored
custom.
A Mexican domestic is not thought less
OF, though she may have lived in a dozen
different houses during the year. The love
of finery, which is inherent in all the
daughters of Eve, is strong in the hearts
go out to service merely to earn money
enough to buy herself an embroidered
chemise, a red flannel petticoat or gay rib
bons for her hair, and as soon as this am
bition is attained. she will inform you
that she is tired of working and must go
bone to rest. So little is necessary to |
these children of nature, who can live con-
tentedly on chill and tortillas,
sleep on a straw mat and dress in
but two garments, those above named |
When Betsy and I began housekeeping
here We engaged a rather decent looking old
as ~laundress, but though the wages |
were exceptionally good-for this country
she left at the end of the first month-as
Usual para descansas." Not many days
later, and regularly afterward, she used to
with her five children-a hungry
horde, ragged and dirty to a degree-to beg
scraps OF food from the kitchen. Being
asked why, when SO poor. she left
4 good place and preferred begging to hon
est employment, she shrugged her shout
lers and replied with an ingenious smile:
Jesus! If yon only knew the pleasure of
1oing nothine!" Ny friend, Mrs. c., for
nerly from Ohio, having endured al! man
aer of trouble with domestics during the
to take a little Mexican girl to ''bring
1p," and to instruct Der in housekeeping
according to American ideas. But the diff
iculty was that in all poverty-stricken
Mexico there is s arce]y a family,
viii consent to I'd their
daughters to what is considered a life of
l avery. At last a child of IL years old
Fas secured-one of a large family which
ras maintained chiefly by public charity
md Mrs. c. promised the girls mother that
osefita, as she was named. should be
AIKEN regularly to church, taught to read
nd sew, be kept well clothed, and allowed
o visit her mother at frequently intervals.
azy as the rest of her race; and as vain as
Though she bad never owned a
tocking, she would not consent to put her
Mahogany colored feet into anything but
ome dirty white satin slippers, enormous
Y high heeled an5 much too short for her, !
overall pairs of which had been given her
y the female performers IN Orrin's Circus. !
t least once every week her !
lother-a tall, slatternly woman,
18th tangled hair and a cigarette eternally
her mouth-would come to visit j oseita,
ccompanied by a friend, q friends friend, S
nd a train of girls, her other daughters, g
lvariably they all trailed around to the t
Itchen, seated themselves on the floor, and =
noked and smoked till literally all was =
Then the cook would give them =
me dinner, which, it is needless =
say. they ate with a relish, after =
bich they smoked as before till nightfall. .
1T the climax OF the pow-wow came with +
e time to 60, and then, with little JOSE u
"a in the midst, they would set up a regn- v
r howl, shedding floods OF tears, bewail- b
3 her sad fate bitterly in being thus left e
languish in captivity. After these visits "
e girl was fit for nothing for several DAYS, d
1t would sit listlessly on the floor with S,
,nds folded and eyes fixed on vacancy Il
ID nothing could arouse her but the "
omise OF a visit to her mother. ~